Rudy Acuna - [LRL] LA in our memories

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 Latino history as much as preserve it

Guest Voz: Rodolfo Acuña — Museums filter Latino history as much as preserve it

Apr 20, 2012, 12:00 AM

By Rodolfo F. Acuña
LatinaLista

Curators defend their institutional efforts toward historical accuracy – and some do make an effort. Yet this reform has been countered by the resurgence of what I call a “Daughters of the American Revolution” mentality.

The mission of museums like schools is to keep alive a collective memory, a representation of the past shared by a community. In this context, American institutions have been more successful in selling illusions of the past than portraying historical accuracy. Prominent historians such as the liberal Arthur Schlesinger Jr. went so far as to insist that only the Western civilization was worth learning — to the exclusion of a worldview.

Mural at the Gene Autry National Center of the American West

The collective memory forged by most museums is consequently a distortion of memory and history. It is more based on the personal experiences and expectations of the curators and its funders than it is on historical accuracy.

Their purpose is to forge collective memories that fosters and defines group identities. Museums are popular because we believe that they represent what really was. Truth be told, they are not accurate and the exhibits exclude minorities such as the Mexican who consequently remain invisible.

In recent years, many groups have challenged the role of museums and the accuracy of their collections and displays. Consequently, there have been changes since 1989 when the article was published. The Latino population has exploded. Los Angeles is over fifty percent Latino. In 1968 there were only about 50 Mexican American PhDs. Today there are thousands more Latino intellectuals who have forced a discourse, which has resulted in public art galleries including Chicana/o art that is no longer relegated to the category of folk art.

Ironically, even though there are over 4 million Latinos in LA and 50 million nationally, there are few well-funded Latino historical museums. The following is a reprint of an article I published in 1989 dealing with museums and the Cinco de Mayo.

Rodolfo F. Acuña, “No way to celebrate Cinco de Mayo,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, May 5, 1989.

On Cinco de Mayo, 1862, Mexican troops, under the command of Texas-born Gen. Ignacio Zaragosa, defeated the French at Puebla. It was the beginning of a six-year struggle that ended French imperial ambitions and served notice to all nations that Mexico would fight future colonization.

Mexicans in the United States once hoped that Cinco de Mayo would celebrate Latino history. Instead, it’s become a beerfest. Dancing Mexicans are apparently preferable to an appreciation of their history.

Consider:

There is no museum dedicated to preserving the history of Latinos in California. Furthermore, the state’s public schools don’t even recognize a Latino history month as they do a black one. In Anglo eyes, Latino history is so much folk dancing.

The recently opened Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Griffith Park is typical of this mindset. Located in a tri-level building, the museum purports to trace the history of the West from the 16th century to the present. Truth be told, however, it is not a historical museum – it is a theatrical production. And, as theatre, the exhibit designer, Walt Disney Imagineering, deserves an Oscar for creating yet another fantasyland masterpiece.

A 140-foot mural, titled the “Spirits of the West,” dominates the museum’s Heritage Hall. The only identifiable Mexicans (or for that matter, Hispanics) in it are a missionary and a brown man playing a guitar. Another candidate is a buxomly dancehall lady, whom a tour guide described to a group of junior-high students as “one of the girls who kept the boys happy!”

The mural is filled with historical inaccuracies. Under the gold-mining section, Plains Indians are mistakenly portrayed as California natives. In the mural’s other sections, there is no depiction of the role of indigenous Native Americans or Mexican labor in the development of ranching and agriculture. Obvious historical landmarks – Francisco Lopez’s discovery of gold in Placerita Canyon in 1842, for one – are missing.

The museum’s other galleries reflect the so-called “Spirits” in the mural – “Spirits of Community,” “Spirit of Opportunity,” “Spirit of Conquest,” etc. What they all have in common is that they represent a cowboy’s vision of the past.

The “Spirit of Imagination” is a case in point. The gallery showcases the myths and fantasy images of the West as portrayed by the media. No surprise, then, that a slick 3-D film presentation insults the Native American, giving the impression that the “wind” blew change, rather than the Colt six-shooter, the Winchester rifle and the gatling gun. The film also portrays blacks as small farmers who helped settle the West. The history of racism toward them is conveniently omitted.

The “Spirit of the Cowboy” gallery is little more than a Western Costume Company. Cowboy regalia, saddles and six-shooters abound. A sense of the vaquero’s (literally, the cowman’s) tradition is nowhere to be seen. As a result, museum visitors don’t learn anything about the major Mexican contributions to the Euro-American cattle industry.

The “Spirit of Conquest” is Tinsel Town’s version of how the West was won. The museum’s historians rationalize the slaughter of Native Americans and the invasion and colonization of Mexico’s Northwest by the United States in a manner reminiscent of the 1950s. A gallery place card reads: “When people of different cultures meet, they often fight, especially if their way of life or families seem threatened. Sometimes, individuals adapt to newcomers, however, and attempt to live in peace. In either instance, change is inevitable.” No doubt, if the French had won the war with Mexico, they could have used the same rationale.

What is most offensive about Gene Autry’s museum is that children will believe that its portrayal of the West is true. Well-meaning but a-historical teachers can’t be expected to correct the falsehoods running rampant in the museum. Sadly, given the composition of L.A. schools, you can bet that a majority of Latino children will come away with the belief that their ancestors, rather than contributing to the development of the West, sought to resist it.

The presence of this museum should remind Latinos that the celebration of Cinco de Mayo in no way represents an acceptance of their historical presence. The state of California justly supports an Afro-American Museum in Exhibition Park and funds Asian and Holocaust museums. The City of Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles donated more than a dozen acres of park land for the Autry monument to the white cowboy. It apparently never bothered to check if the Western Heritage Museum discriminates against other Angelenos.

On this Cinco de Mayo, Latinos should take the cue from the heroes of Puebla and demand that state and local politicos show them the same respect other ethnic groups receive. For starters, Latinos should rebuff Councilman Richard Alatorre’s … proposal to raise private money for a combined “Art, Cultural and Historical Museum.”

Alatorre’s approach is wrong-headed for a number of reasons. One, state and local government should not be excused from funding a Latino museum. Two, a private museum would hand over large sums of money to Latino developers who would then bend over backwards to satisfy contributors’ historical biases. Finally, joining history with art and culture would obscure the Latinos’ historical role. Alatorre should understand that it is less threatening to Anglos to concede us art (without political content) and pseudo-culture rather than our history.

Latino students deserve more than being paraded around during Cinco de Mayo to keep the boys and girls of the West happy.

There is nothing wrong with commemorating the past. However, when history is used to control memory that becomes political – it is propaganda. Since at least the Sixties, schools and museums have been stunted by personal feelings and memories that are not always “accurate or appropriate.”

As mentioned up until now, the paradigm has been controlled by those in charge. Xenophobia has played a large part in resisting a correction that would bring about a more accurate version of the past. The tragedy is their story shapes how an experience is remembered.

Up until recently, histories such as mine and other dissenters have been called historical revisionism instead of corrective histories. The Holocaust Museum is a good example of a museum that keeps a memory intact. Genocides are grave injustices and they should be remembered.

However, the public also deserves to have access to an Armenian Holocaust Museum as well as museums on slavery and the destruction and annihilation of Native American societies. What is now Mexico had a population of 25 million natives –within 80 years only a million were left and their books were almost totally destroyed.

Those in charge are going to great lengths to control memory. They readily give the people “Cinco de Mayo to keep the boys and girls of the West happy.” But it is another matter when they want their constitutional rights, they want their elected officials to follow the Constitution, and they want to be visible.

History will show the justice of what is happening in Arizona. It will prove Sean Arce and the dozen teachers who took on the Tucson Robber Barons are right.

The system has fired them. They can lose their homes and the stress will tear some families apart. However, they and thousands of people will remember the injustices that have now become part of Mexican American and Latino history.

Today, we have many more educators who know the story and are publicizing the duplicity and mendacity of the Pedicones, the Hicks’, the Stegemans, and the Cuevases – we will remember what is happening in Tucson just as we do what Pete Wilson did in 1994.

A postscript: When the article came out in 1989, the curator of the Autry Museum wrote a letter to the Herald-Examiner and complained that the model for the Mexican woman in the painting was his wife. I answered that I was merely quoting his tour guide and that perhaps he should educate his employees. Not every Mexican woman, like in the movies, was a “dance hall girl.”

 

History Lesson: Barrio for Sale

Rudy Acuña: Barrios should not be for sale and when they are developed it should be for the benefit of the community and not elites such as the Committee of 25 or the Southern Arizona Leadership Council.

• Rodolfo F. Acuña
• Apr 13, 2012

Aside from the injustices in Arizona -- the scraping of a highly successful education program, the evident war against Mexicans, and the nullification of the U.S Constitution -- I was seduced to the struggle by David A. Morales’ “Three Sonoran” blogs in the TucsonCitizen.

His crusade against the white business cabal that runs the City of Tucson resembled the epic battle of David and Goliath, making enemies of those in power. It was this fight that is the real reason that he was fired from the Citizen, forcing him to begin his own site.

Reading about the Southern Arizona Leadership Council (SALC) was Déjà vu.

A 19th Century U.S and Mexico historian I got hooked on the issue of urban renewal (AKA people removal). I got interested in the subject in the late 1970s when I began to microfilming articles on Mexican Americans in the EastsideSun (Boyle Heights). I was attracted to the Sun because I wanted to piece together the relations between the progressive Mexican and Jewish communities.

Jewish Americans once the dominant group in the Heights did not become a minority there until the 1950s. Mexicans were greatly influenced by left leaning Jews and they joined organizations such as Henry Wallace’s American Independent Party (1948).

Members of both groups graduated from Roosevelt High School where they formed friendships. Two prominent Roosevelt alumni are Judge Harry Pregerson who serves the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and former Ambassador to Mexico Dr. Julian Nava.

The Jewish community left many landmarks. Hollenbeck Park was a replica of German Tiergartens – built by German Jews. Many former synagogues such as la Casa Del Mexicano have become public spaces.

While microfilming the Sun’s articles, I had long conversations with its publisher, Joe Kovner, who although he had moved to the Fairfax area had strong ties to Boyle Heights. Kovner led an incessant war to preserve Boyle Heights. He did not want it to meet the same fate as Bunker Hill and Chavez Ravine where the Committee of 25, the Los Angeles Times and their gaggle of elected officials joined to “develop” these areas for their own profit. Kovner called it a war on the poor.

The articles opened up a new world for me; they inspired me to microfilm articles in the Belvedere Citizen that serviced the unincorporated area of East Los Angeles. I then made research notes on articles on 5 x 8 cards. They were included as a timeline in the second half of a manuscript. I synthesized the Citizen and Sun articles year by year beginning in 1934 and ending in 1975.

UCLA published Community Under Siege: A Chronicle of Chicanos East of the Los Angeles River, 1945-1975, 560pp, in 1984. It was one of my least popular books; nevertheless heavily used by urban planners and graduate students studying the city.

After this point, my research turned to urban spaces. I found that Los Angeles shared a history of real estate foreclosures and the bulldozing of entire communities. So-called elites under the leadership of the Los Angeles Times and other media sold the notion that they were “developing” the city much the same as Wall Street banks and the corporate elite today claim that they are “job creators.”

I found similar patterns in Tucson, El Paso and Chicago. In L.A. they were led by the Committee of 25 that even today operate in a different form. Real Estate lawyers led by ex-mayor Richard Riordan have made fortunes in buying public real estate. Riordan along with developer Eli Broad control local politicos from the mayor to board members of the Los Angeles Unified Schools.

Riordan is the king of privatizers. As mayor he wanted to privatize the City’s main library. Today he is attempting to privatize the schools. In a heated exchange I asked him whether he wanted to make Olvera Street another MacDonald’s; he answered, yes, just so it went to the highest bidders. Broad, a billionaire, is his closest ally.

In Chicago the Daly Machine was the developers’ and bankers’ dream. In the Windy City what was not being renewed was being gentrified. If it was not accomplished under the cover of the law, entire housing projects were burned out – all in the name of progress.

In the 1980s and 90s I wrote for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the Los AngelesTimes. In the aftermath of Community Under Siege, I naturally wrote many articles about the notion of community and issues related to urban space -- immigrants, the cultural pimping of Olvera Street and museums, racism and sexism on the campuses, the building of a prison in East Los Angeles, the building of a gas pipeline under Boyle Heights – events showing a profound disrespect for Latinos.

The profits in development of urban space and the schools are humungous: service contracts, building of public utilities lines, roads, construction – all of which are approved by governing boards and commissions.

In the 90s at Riordan’s behest, Superintendent of Schools Ruben Zacarias was removed. Latino elected officials in their majority supported Zacarias. However, there were powerful Latinos who defected.

On April 2, 1990 in an op-ed column in the Los Angeles Times titled “History Is People,” I wrote:

News that a small group of preservationists seeks to transform Olvera Street from a Mexican marketplace into a multi-ethnic museum should outrage Latinos. After all, the plaza area has been inhabited by Mexicans since 1781, when a dozen or so peasants, mostly from the Mexican states of Sinaloa and Sonora, founded the Pueblo of Los Angeles. Spending time on Olvera Street is thus a trip through tradition.

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From 1900-1930, bulldozers virtually cleared the civic center of all else that was Mexican, mostly family homes. Then, Christine Sterling and members of the city's social and economic elite moved, in the late '20s, to save and preserve Olvera as a symbol of Los Angeles' Mexican heritage. The street was little more than an alley. Like the Avila adobe, which had been condemned, its days were numbered.

At first, Olvera was part of California's "Fantasy Heritage"-a tourist trap. But over the years, its people reintegrated it with the plaza and Our Lady Queen of the Angels, the city's oldest church. Mexicans and other Latinos began returning to Los Angeles' Bethlehem. Today, Olvera Street is where many of us go to celebrate our holidays or to enjoy the oldest remnant of Mexicanbuz heritage in the center of the city.

Certainly, a tradition worth preserving, right?

Jeane Poole, curator of El Pueblo Historic Park, has embraced Olvera Street's dilapidated buildings-mostly stucco and red brick-rather than its traditions and people. It's no secret that she believes the Mexican presence on Olvera Street so overwhelming that the contributions of the Chinese, the Italians and other neighborhood ethnic groups to the city's development have been eclipsed. To dilute the Mexican presence, she has advocated that restoration of Olvera Street spotlight the architecture of its buildings. Toward this end, she has enlisted the support of architectural historians.

For 12 years, Poole and her gaggle of Anglo historians have been plotting to impose their Mexican-less vision of Olvera Street. Their opportunity for success came when administration of El Pueblo Park passed from state to the city Recreation and Parks Commission. Eager to renovate, the commissioners put together a proposal. Since they and the Recreation and Parks Dept. lack the expertise to make historical recommendations, Peter Snell, an architectural historian, was paid to make some. Snell is a close friend of Poole and has acted as a consultant for El Pueblo Park.

The commission's proposal calls for Olvera Street to be renovated and its history interpreted in conformity with the architecture of the "Prime Historic Period" of 1920-1932. Why 1920-1932? Why not 1880-1910? For one thing, the latter would involve tearing down what constitutes today's Chinatown to make way for reconstruction of Sonora Town.

In any case, historians will tell you that "Prime Historic Periods" are convenient covers for diluting the influence of unwanted groups. In the case of Olvera Street: No Mexicans Wanted.

What the commissioners and the building-oriented historians are forgetting is that, like it or not, if it had not been for the Mexican marketplace, there would be no preservation debate, since there would be no buildings to preserve. Before Mexican merchants moved in, many of Poole's "Prime Historic" buildings were slated for demolition-the preferred people-remover technique in the '30s. But when the alley became a thriving marketplace, those dilapidated stucco and red-brick buildings that Poole now waxes poetic over were saved.

History is made by people, not by buildings. The Latino hegemony in the plaza area is a reminder that Mexicans, here long before the Gringo, are not aliens. Put a plaque on those buildings to indicate that they are proud examples of the Poole's "Prime Historic Period." As for Olvera Street, the plaza area and its people, they are too alive to be turned into a musty museum built by Poole and Associates.

Without getting into too much detail, when I decided to support the effort to preserve Tucson’s Mexican American history, I encountered the same history of pillage as in LA. Where had the people gone that once lived in the adobes? Where were the communities?

I had reviewed University of Arizona Professor Lydia R. Otero's book proposal “La Calle: Spatial Conflictsand Urban Renewal in a Southwest City,” for the UA Press. It was a major contribution to the field of study.

It was, however, the Three Sonorans that took that history to the level of struggle. Morales’ passion reminded me of Joe Kovner as well as Ernesto Galarza’s applied scholarship. Galarza often spoke of his role in preserving Alviso in San Jose, California. For Galarza, Alviso represented the struggle of the Mexican American urban poor to preserve community, which to him meant the preservation of a historical memory which gave residents the knowledge to check the monopolistic tendencies of the urban elites. Galarza said that without a historical memory Mexicans were vulnerable to the robber barons, developers who manipulated the historical narrative.

Observing and knowing the historical processes, I applied these experiences to Tucson. The parallels are obvious. They answered the question as to why SALC opposes Mexican American Studies. They explain the extreme measures that it is taking to wipe out the Mexcan’s historical memory.

There is a lot of money involved; the stakes are high. It goes beyond real estate. It is racial in nature because it uses race to justify its actions. The cabal exploits the fact that Mexicans are the majority of the school population and that they are becoming the majority of Tucson residents to raise fears.

This tactic depends on eliminating Sean Arce, the MAS teachers and Morales. They remember the words of Lalo Guerrero’s “Barrio Viejo:”

 Viejo barrio, old neighborhood,
There's only leveled spaces
where once there were houses,
where once people lived.

There are only ruins
of the happy homes
of the joyous families,
of these folks that I loved…

As Galarza once said, people constantly on the move do not form communities. That is why historical memory is so important to preserving space. Barrios should not be for sale and when they are developed it should be for the benefit of the community and not elites such as the Committee of 25 or the Southern Arizona Leadership Council.

Rodolfo F. Acuña

 

 

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